My afternoon snack of a Chobani yogurt comes from New York State’s $14 billion dairy industry. The state leads the country in Greek yogurt production. Interviews with 88 dairy parlor workers describe low wages, injuries, and poor housing and a call for companies to adopt strong labor codes of conduct.

After almost 14 mostly dismal years on the academic job market, I find it a consolation to read an opinion piece in Times Higher Education under the headline “Swedish Academia Is No Meritocracy“. In my experience this is also true for Denmark, Norway and Finland. In Norway, for instance, the referee board that evaluates job…

We all know that aerobic exercise is good for us because it helps improve muscle function and our ability to move well. For fish, aerobic exercise helps animals escape predators, catch prey as well as improve reproduction success. When we exercise, our muscles adapt by altering the metabolism of energy, the way calcium is handled as…

Researchers in Brazil are testing a new way to treat burn victims. They have found that tilapia skin is rich in collagen which helps the damaged skin heal better than standard wound dressings and eliminates the need to wait for donor tissue. Check out these videos from YouTube describing this radical new idea in burn…

It is hard to find a good book for kids between the ages of 5 and 9. These are kids who can read, but at varying (and rapidly changing) levels, and who are too fancy for the little kid books (thick, big pictures, few words, boring). Amanda and Huxley spend a lot of time figuring…

While lavender aromatherapy has been documented to reduce stress in humans, little is known about its potential for reducing stress in veterinary medicine. Horses can develop elevated heart rates and stress hormone levels when they are confined to horse trailers and transported to new competition venues. Therapies to reduce stress in competition horses are regulated…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in Britain recently studied ‘willpower’ in pet Labrador retrievers. After allowing each dog to smell a hot dog, the researchers placed the hot dog in a hamster cage and sealed it shut with duct tape. While some dogs showed only mild interest in the sealed-up hot dog, others were fixated on…

Have you ever heard of ‘Goodpasture Syndrome’? I’ll admit I haven’t. Check out the award-winning video below for the 2017 American Physiological Society’s video contest to learn about this syndrome. The video was created by Melissa Traver, Samantha Lyons, and Andrianna Walsh from Centenary College of Louisiana. Congratulations!!

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a pretty scary thing, which is why researchers are working so hard to come up with new and creative ways to fight them off. Take for example nanosponges. In a presentation from the Experimental Biology meeting in Chicago last month, researchers from the University of California in San Diego are testing the…

Dr. Kenneth Catania from Vanderbilt University presented his work with star-nosed moles at the Experimental Biology meeting last month in Chicago. These animals are really cool. Here are some facts from Dr. Catania about these crazy-looking creatures you may not know: If participating in a bug-eating contest, they would win hands down every time because they are the…

Super Photo

In Conversation

"An estimated 9 million deaths in 2015 can be attributed to air, water, and soil pollution. This compares to an estimated 4 million deaths from obesity, 2.3 million from alcohol, and 1.4 million on roadways."

In Conversation II

"Integrative medicine shows up at the gates of academic medicine looking like 'nutrition, physical activity, and stress reduction,' but once the horse is pulled into the ivory tower of academia, out jumps the real quackery, like naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, and functional medicine."

Super Photo II

Insight II

In Conversation III

"It is a little known fact that I love cathedrals and their stonework, indeed all old stonework, and at one point considered becoming a stonemason. I didn’t because, well, 'it would have been weird' given my life-trajectory to that point."